Balochistan

Balochistan بلوچستان
Region
Balochistan region in pink
Countries	Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan
Population (2013)
• Total	c. 18-19 million[1][2][3]
Demographics
• Ethnic groups	Baloch
Largest cities	Quetta Zahedan Pasni Chabahar Gwadar Zaranj

Balochistan^[4] (Balochi: بلوچستان; also Baluchistan, often interpreted as the Land of the Baloch) is an arid desert and mountainous region in south-western Asia. It comprises the Pakistani province of Balochistan, the Iranian province of Sistan and Baluchestan, and the southern areas of the Afghan provinces of Nimruz, Helmand, and Kandahar.^[5][6] Balochistan borders the Pashtun region to the north, Sindh to the east, Punjab to the northeast, and Persian regions to the west. Across its southern coastline lies the Persian Gulf.

Etymology

The name Balochistan is generally believed to derive from that of the Baloch people,^[5] but this is not certain. The term "Baloch" does not appear in pre-Islamic sources. It is likely that the Balochs were known by some other name at their place of origin and acquired the name "Baloch" after arriving in Balochistan sometime in the 10th century.^[7] The Suffix "-stān" is a Persian word meaning "place".

Johan Hansman relates the term "Baloch" to Meluḫḫa, the name by which the Indus Valley Civilisation is believed to have been known to the Sumerians (2900–2350 BC) and Akkadians (2334–2154 BC) in Mesopatamia.^[8] Meluḫḫa disappears from the Mesopotamian records at the beginning of the second millennium B.C.^[9] However, Hansman states that a trace of it in a modified form, as Baluḫḫu, was retained in the names of products imported by the Assyrians (911–605 BC).^[10] Al-Muqaddasī (985 AD), who visited the capital of Makran Bannajbur, states that it was populated by people called Balūṣī (Baluchi), leading Hansman to postulate "Baluch" as a modification of Meluḫḫa and Baluḫḫu.^[11]

Asko Parpola relates the name Meluḫḫa to Indo-Aryan words mleccha (Sanskrit) and milakkha/milakkhu (Pali) etc., which do not have an Indo-European etymology even though they were used to refer to non-Aryan people. Taking them to be proto-Dravidian in origin, he interprets the term as meaning either a proper name milu-akam (from which tamilakam was dervied when the Indus people migrated south) or melu-akam, meaning "high country", a possible reference to Balochistan high lands.^[12] Historian Romila Thapar also interprets Meluḫḫa as a proto-Dravidian term, possibly mēlukku, and suggests the meaning "western extremity" (of the Dravidian-speaking regions in the Indian subcontinent). A literal translation into Sanskrit, aparānta, was later used to describe the region by the Indo-Aryans.^[13]

During the time of Alexander the Great, the Greeks called the land Gedrosia and its people Gedrosoi, terms of unknown origin.^[14] Using etymological reasoning, H. W. Bailey reconstructs a possible Iranian name, uadravati, meaning the land of underground channels, which could have been transformed to badlaut in the 9th century and further to balōč in later times. This reasoning remains speculative.^[15]

History

The earliest evidence of human occupation in what is now Balochistan is dated to the Paleolithic era, represented by hunting camps and lithic scatters, chipped and flaked stone tools. The earliest settled villages in the region date to the ceramic Neolithic (c. 7000–6000 BCE) and included the site of Mehrgarh in the Kachi Plain. These villages expanded in size during the subsequent Chalcolithic, when interaction was amplified. This involved the movement of finished goods and raw materials, including chank shell, lapis lazuli, turquoise, and ceramics. By 2500 BCE (the Bronze Age), the region now known as Pakistani Balochistan had become part of the Harappan cultural orbit,^[16] providing key resources to the expansive settlements of the Indus river basin to the east.

From the 1st century to the 3rd century CE, the region was ruled by the Pāratarājas (lit. "Pārata Kings"), a dynasty of Indo-Scythian or Indo-Parthian kings. The dynasty of the Pāratas is thought to be identical with the Pāradas of the Mahabharata, the Puranas and other vedic and Iranian sources.^[17] The Parata kings are essentially known through their coins, which typically exhibit the bust of the ruler (with long hair in a headband) on the obverse, and a swastika within a circular legend on the reverse, written in Brahmi (usually silver coins) or Kharoshthi (copper coins). These coins are mainly found in Loralai in today's western Pakistan.

Herodotus in 450 BCE described the Paraitakenoi as a tribe ruled by Deiokes, a Persian king, in northwestern Persia (History I.101). Arrian describes how Alexander the Great encountered the Pareitakai in Bactria and Sogdiana, and had them conquered by Craterus (Anabasis Alexandrou IV). The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (1st century CE) describes the territory of the Paradon beyond the Ommanitic region, on the coast of modern Balochistan.^[18]

The region was fully Islamized by the 9th century and became part of the territory of the Saffarids of Zaranj, followed by the Ghaznavids, then the Ghorids. Ahmad Shah Durrani made it part of the Afghan Empire in 1749. In 1758 the Khan of Kalat, Mir Noori Naseer Khan Baloch, revolted against Ahmed Shah Durrani, defeated him, and freed Balochistan, winning complete independence.^{[19][20][21][22]}

Governance and political disputes

The Balochistan region is administratively divided among three countries, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. The largest portion in area and population is in Pakistan, whose largest province (in land area) is Balochistan. An estimated 6.9 million of Pakistan's population is Baloch. In Iran there are about two million ethnic Baloch^[23] and a majority of the population of the eastern Sistan and Baluchestan Province is of Baloch ethnicity. The Afghan portion of Balochistan includes the Chahar Burjak District of Nimruz Province, and the Registan Desert in southern Helmand and Kandahar provinces. The governors of Nimruz province in Afghanistan belong to the Baloch ethnic group.

In Pakistan, insurgencies by Baloch nationalists in Balochistan province have been fought in 1948, 1958–59, 1962–63 and 1973–77 — with a new ongoing and reportedly stronger, broader insurgency beginning in 2003.^[24] Historically, "drivers" of the conflict are reported to include "tribal divisions", the Baloch-Pashtun ethnic divisions, "marginalization by Punjabi interests", and "economic oppression".^[25] In Iran, separatist fighting has reportedly not gained as much ground as the conflict in Pakistan,^[26] but has grown and become more sectarian since 2012,^[23] with the majority-Sunni Baloch showing a greater degree of Salafist and anti-Shia ideology in their fight against the Shia-Islamist Iranian government.^[23]

See also

• Sistan and Baluchistan Province
• Balochistan conflict
• Mehrgarh
• Bolan Pass
• Seistan Force

References

Bibliography

• Dashti, Naseer (2012), The Baloch and Balochistan: A Historical Account from the Beginning to the Fall of the Baloch State, Trafford Publishing, pp. 33–, ISBN 978-1-4669-5896-8 
• Hansman, John (1973), "A Periplus of Magan and Meluhha", Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 36 (3): 553–587, doi:10.1017/S0041977X00119858, JSTOR 613582 
• Hansman, John (1975), "A further note on Magan and Meluhha (Notes and Communications)", Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 38 (3): 609–610, doi:10.1017/s0041977x00048126, JSTOR 613711 
• Parpola, Asko; Parpola, Simo (1975), "On the relationship of the Sumerian toponym Meluhha and Sanskrit mleccha", Studia Orientalia, 46: 205–238 
• Parpola, Asko (2015), The Roots of Hinduism: The Early Aryans and the Indus Civilization, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-022692-3 
• Tandon, Pankaj (2006), "New light on the Pāratarājas" (PDF), Numismatic Chronicle, 166, JSTOR 42666407 
• Thapar, Romila (January 1975), "A Possible Identification of Meluḫḫa, Dilmun and Makan", Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 18 (1): 1–42, doi:10.1163/156852075x00010, JSTOR 3632219 

External links

• Persia (Iran), Afghanistan and Baluchistan is a map from 1897 published by The Century Company
• Afghanistan, Beloochistan, etc. is a map from 1893 published by the American Methodist Church
• Balochistan Archives- Preserving our Past

Districts of Balochistan, Pakistan
Provincial capital: Quetta
Kalat	Awaran Kalat Kharan Khuzdar Lasbela Mastung Washuk
Makran	Gwadar Kech Panjgur Mand
Nasirabad	Jafarabad Jhal Magsi Kachhi Nasirabad Lehri Sohbatpur
Quetta	Chagai Killa Abdullah District Nushki Pishin Quetta
Sibi	Dera Bugti Harnai Kohlu Sibi Ziarat
Zhob	Barkhan Killa Saifullah District Loralai Musakhel Sherani Zhob

Coordinates: 27°25′N 64°30′E / 27.417°N 64.500°E / 27.417; 64.500